The October 2006 edition of The Lancet, a British Medical Journal, concluded that 654,965 Iraqis, [about 500 people a day] have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/
Nearly 4,000 Americans have also perished and the number of people dying in Iraq has risen on an annual basis.
Fifteen million U.S.A. tax dollars a day provide Israel the means to continue its 40 years of occupation of Palestine; while International Law states occupation is to be temporary.
"Every day, the U.S gives more than $7,023,288 to the Israeli government and military (and at least $108 billion since 1948), but provides nothing to the Palestinians…The indirect or consequential costs to the American taxpayer as a result of Washington’s blind support for Israel exceed by many times the amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel." http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html
The genesis of Mother's Day in the U.S.A. began when Anna Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community, 150 years ago.
Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else.
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wrote the first Mother's Day Proclamation, from which I excerpt:
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
…From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the 21st century, patriarchal testosterone driven 'civilization' persists in the manufacturing, use of, and exporting of weapons of destruction which terrorize innocent children just because they happen to be Iraqis, Palestinians, or have the misfortune to be born in any other country that defies the empire builders of American hegemony.
In 1999, the UN dedicated the first decade of the 21st century to Create a Culture of Nonviolence for All Children of The World.
On December 29, 2005, while I was in the Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory, attending a workshop sponsored by the United Network of Young Peace Builders [UNOY] the Netherlands Expertise Centre Alternatives to Violence informed this reporter that in regards to the United Nations Decade of Creating a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World, America abstained from voting YES and is on the record in the UN as stating:
"We cannot support this initiative as it will make it harder for us to wage war." (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
